Sep 28, 2012

Yesterday I made an announcement on my personal Twitter account and my personal Facebook page that I had made the decision to get rid of my personal social networking accounts. The only two I really use are Facebook and Twitter. I have a Google+ account but I never use it. This somewhat drastic change prompted my own mom to call me up, obviously concerned. In our modern society social networking is the new normal. Not using it is strange.

The thing about these social network sites though is that the CIA, KGB and the multitude of other three letter agencies around the globe would have killed for something like Facebook back in the 60's, 70's and 80's. It basically does all the work for them when it comes to surveillance. They get a daily play-by-play of your personal life, and your activities. Not only that but it creates a ready to use database of all your known contacts and associates. All they have to do is sit back and collect it.

So let's say you are like my wife who basically says, "who cares? I have nothing to hide. Let them read about how many diapers I had to change today, or the funny things our kids say." The idea that you have nothing to hide is not the point here. The point is that if the Government is using your personal data to keep tabs on you and to develop a database of your entire life, that alone is the problem. They shouldn't be doing that. Period.

The fact that you readily, freely, and often times eagerly put your personal information out there just makes the Government's job super easy. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano said this about the Government's surveillance activities:

Think of it this way--if we have to look for a needle in a haystack, it makes sense to use all of the information we have about the pieces of hay to make the haystack smaller.

I deleted my Facebook account and will be deleting my Twitter account this upcoming week to make my needle a little smaller for Janet's haystack. Why make it super easy on them?

"But Paul, the Government can't be spying on us Americans. That is just a conspiracy theory!" - All My Friends and Family

Is it? Check out this video from the New York Times, a reputable journalist publication (Despite their left-wing spin) about former NSA Agent William Binney who is now a Government whistle-blower because he believes that what the Government is doing against Americans is wrong, and is no different than what happened in East Germany when it became a totalitarian state.

With laws like FISA, this type of surveillance is legal and accepted under the guise of national security. Not to mention laws like NDAA and Obama's upcoming Cybersecurity Executive Order, things are only going to get worse. The Government is already preparing to scale up on their surveillance with the NSA's Utah Data Center.

If you want to follow my lead, I know you may be reluctant. For years you have shared your photos and such on Facebook. I felt the same. I had a lot of pictures I wanted to keep. I used a tool called Photograbber to download all of my albums before I deleted my account. After I had my images it was a little easier.

Okay, you have a backup of your pictures, now what? Well a site called Delete Your Account makes it easy as they show you exactly where to go to delete your account on any site you want.

If you still want to follow Bauer-Power on Facebook, I am leaving up the fan page. I have also created a new Twitter account for Bauer-Power as well, and you can follow us there. If you want to chat, you can add me to your Gtalk with my email paul (at) bauer-power (dot) net. However I will probably only carry on extended conversations if you use Pidgin with Pidgin-Encryption. If you want to email me, I'm going to start limiting my email conversations to those who use PGP/GPG. You can grab my public key here.

Otherwise, you can just stay up to date with my professional stuff here on the blog. If you have any questions, comments, or complaints feel free to sound off below in the comments.